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13 February 2017

Fantasy

There are limits to telling the truth — I’m learning them as
I look at houses. The trouble starts with the task of identifying and communicating
with stakeholders. I learned the word stakeholder
last year. Stakeholders have different needs and desires, and you as the father, or researcher, or other
person responsible for coordinating efforts, must somehow match synergies and lead on innovation. These are phrases you use to paper bad ideas,
but they are also things that need doing, dumb tasks that fill up hours and
days: looking at houses on the Internet, showing iPad screens to wives, and
engaging energetic men and women in the real estate community. Banks are also
stakeholders, so I also faced the fear of calling the States to transfer some
of my savings over to the UK. Every step of the process has been filled with a
dread doesn’t seem to be substantiated, but it has followed me, gnawing away.
When I finally called, I was connected through to a polite young man, who
called me sir and after forty minutes
of confirming and reconfirming my details, assured me that my money would be
received before Valentine’s Day. I felt triumphant hanging up the phone, like I had faced some substantial imaginary fear and come out better for it. This is what adulthood is, after all.

The houses themselves are all perfect except for one thing:
a price, or a second room, or a location. We’ve gone to them one by one over
the last couple of weeks uncovering new and imperfect places around the B17
post code. First liberated by the feeling that I could buy a house, the
decision itself has been harder as the imperfections make themselves known. The
first house we we saw, just a short walk up Tennel road, had a building in the
back, and then a shed as well — places I fantasised that I and the guinea pigs
could hide out if needed. No one else liked it though, and I started to learn
the things you need to do when you’re house-hunting. Forget fantasies of hiding
out with the pets – there are more important things to consider, like damp and
the presence or absence of an entryway. When you walk through, you must scan
the ceilings, looking for water spots, and then find the boiler and comment on
whether it is new or relatively new or old, and in need of replacing. You must
not appear too eager and not ever say, under any circumstance, the word perfect.

On Thursday, I went further up Tennel Road to a smaller house.
I packed and smoked the last bowl of pipe tobacco I had before setting out as a
way to offset the dread. Everything about the house was perfect (although
I didn’t say it) until we came into the second bedroom. The agent, James, looked
at me with a false optimism when I asked if you could fit a bed in it. He said,
A one and a half, certainly, and I
wanted to say to him, You aren’t married,
James, are you? This, for me, is a sticking point, a ‘deal breaker': the bedroom must have space for a bed that is large enough for
me and my wife. The next house was bigger with a bedroom that had two cribs in
it and space for a loft conversion. The agent spoke to me in a hushed voice,
like someone who wasn’t there might be listening, and said that they would
consider any offer above two zero five. This is a code language for two hundred
five thousand pounds. It sounds like a significantly smaller number, or series
of numbers, if you say them as single digits. I nodded knowingly, like it meant
something to me, but really I just wanted to get away from it and apologise, I’m sorry James, this whole thing has been
a lie. I’m just pretending that I have any idea what I’m doing.

The kids wanted to go to the park after that viewing, but I
was sick with indecision. Instead of going to the park, we drove home, but when
Yoko said she would take them alone, I felt guilty and went round and drove
back amidst cheers of the children behind me. We all got out and as we walked
up the path, Yoko and I fell into silence without discussing this last house or
the loft conversion. The numbers sound so much different in Japanese — when you
say them, you find yourself thinking in yen, not pounds, and it sounds like it
should be substantially more. You feel the need to add zeros. The girls went on
to the playground to make snowmen and have a snowball fight. I hung back and
stood around like I do, awkwardly, my hands in my pockets because I had
forgotten my gloves. I stood in the cold for a few minutes, then excused
myself, giving the car key to Yoko and walking home alone — I was cold and
needed to think.

The house on Victoria Road also grows becomes increasingly
less perfect as we consider it. Holding instant coffee and talking to a man in
the church hall after the service, we discuss post codes and damp and the
weather. I use the code ‘two zero five’ to describe the Court End Road house we
saw with the cribs and he winces —yes, it has become expensive now, remarkably
so. Another man appears with a coffee cup and story of a church member
waiting to have part of his lung removed. It’s been cold, hasn’t it.

I suppose you just have to wait. Having
smoked the last of my Christmas tobacco, I have no reason to go for a walk at
night and escape the house. There’s no reason to tell the truth about how I
feel when Yoko glances across the room or church sanctuary, looking for some comfort,
some answer about something. I don’t have any answers, I want to say — I got
the money over from the States and I have to go to work on again on Monday. What
more can I do. I’m starting a
midlife crisis, I fantasising. I’m
wondering about the future. I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back eventually, don’t
worry. I’ll bring the car around.